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THOMAS CARLYLE'S WORKS. 



The' only complete editions of CARLYLE S^ 

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THOMAS CARLYLE 

FROM THE PORTRAIT BY WILLIAM BARR 



Photographed by T. & R. Annan & Sons. 
Reproduced by kind permission of the 
Editor of " Britannia." 



nr\ 



Fhomas Carlyle 



G. K. CHESTERTON 



AND 



J. E. HODDER WILLIAMS 



WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 



THIRD EDITION 



NEW YORK 

JAMES POTT AND COMPANY 

114 FIFTH AVENUE 

LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON 






PRINTED BY 

HAZELL, WATSON AKD VINEY, LD. 

LONDON AND AYLESBURY, 

ENGLAND. 






LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Portrait of Thomas Carlyle . Frontispiece 

Thomas Carlyle's Mother ........••! 

Arch House, Ecclefechan ...... 

The Room at Arch House in which Carlyle was Born 
Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire . . . . 

Mainhill Farji ........ 

Hodda:m Hill . . . 

Thomas Carlyle (from a Portrait by Maclise) . 

A Portrait of Carlyle Engraved ry F. Croll from a Daguerre 

BY Beard . . . . . . . • 

Thomas Carlyle (from a Sketch by Count D'Orsay) . 

Carlyle's First Edinburgh Lodging in Simon Square 

1, Moray Street (now Spey Street), Leith Walk, Edinburgh 

Tho:mas Carlyle (from Photo) 

Mrs. Carlyle's Birthplace .... 

The House in which Carlyle Lived while first Te 

School ....... 

scotsbrig . . . ... 

Pempland, near Thornhill, Dumfriesshire . 

Thomas Carlyle (from Painting by ^Vhistler) 

21, Comely Bank, Edinburgh 

Thomas Carlyle (from Sir J. E. Boehm's Medalhon) 

Thomas Carlyle, about 18G0 .... 



ACHING AT Kirkcaldy 



2 
2 
3 
4 
4 
5 

6 

8 

9 

10 

11 

11 
12 
12 

13 
14 
15 
16 



IV 



IJST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Thomas Carlyle, 1865 

A Portrait of Carlyle taken in 1879 

Facsimiles of Carlyle's Signature 

Craigenputtock ..... 

Portrait Group taken at Kirkcaldy . 

Thomas Carlyle (from Sir J. E. Boehm's Bust) 

Carlyle's House at 5 (now 24), Cheyne Row, Chelsea 

Jane AVelsh Carlyle ....... 

Corner in Drawing-Room at No. 5, Cheyne Row 

The Garden at No. 5, Cheyne Row . 

Thomas Carlyle (from Drawing in " Sartor Resartus "") 

Mrs. Carlyle about 1864 ...... 

Carlyle's Grave at Ecclefechan . . ... 

Mrs. Carlyle's Grave in Haddington Church . 

Thomas Carlyle (from Sir J. E. JNIillais'' Portrait) 

The Ground-floor Roojis at No. 5, Cheyne Row (1900) 

The Garret Study at Cheyne Row (1857) 

Thomas Cajrlyle, .et. 73 (from Painting by G. F. Watts, R.A.) 

The Sound-Proof Study at Cheyne Row in 1900, showing the Double 
Walls 

The Kitchen at No. 5, Cheyne Row (1900) 

Carlyle's Writing-Desk and Chair . 

Statue of Carlyle (by Sir J. E. Boehm) . 



PAGE 

17 

18 
18 
19 
19 
20 
21 
21 
22 
^o 
24 
25 
26 
26 
27 
28 
29 
30 

31 
32 
33 
35 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



THERE are few cultivated 
people who do not pretend 
to have read Mr. Lecky's " History 
of Rationahsm in Europe." That 
very able work covers the whole of 
one very important side of modern 
development. But the picture of 
the real progress, the real mental and 
moral improvement of our species 
during the last few centuries, will 
not be complete until Mr. Lecky 
publishes a companion volume en- 
titled " The History of Irrationalism 
in Europe." The two tendencies, 
acting together, have been respon- 
sible for the whole advancement of 
the Western world. Rationalism is, 
of course, that power which makes 
people invent sewing machmes, understand Euclid, reform vestries, 
pull out teeth, and number the fixed stars. Irrationalism is that other 
force, if possible more essential, which makes men look at sunsets, 
laugh at jokes, go on crusades, write poems, enter monasteries, and 
jump over hay-cocks. Rationalism is the beneficent attempt to make 
our institutions and theories fit the world we live in, as clothes fit the 
wearer. Irrationalism is the beneficent reminder that, at the best, 

1 




THOMAS CARLYLE'S MOTHER 

(Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Alexander Carlyle) 



2 



THOMAS CARI.YLE 



; 1 

rt 
1 iii,iiii,ini i "^ i,ii%i!iW' 

r^ illl|ii|iBirTiiiil''lp^^ fl 


1 : 



From a photo by J . . ■ .-, • 

ARCJI HOUSE, ECCLEFECHAN 
The Birthplace of Thomas Carlyle 



they do not fit. Ir- 
rationalism exists to 
point out that that 
eccentric old gentle- 
man, " The World," is 
such a curiously shaped 
old gentleman that the 
most perfect coats and 
waistcoats have an ex- 
traordinary way of 
leaving parts of him 
out, sometimes whole 
legs and arms, the existence of which the tailor had not suspected. 
And as surely as there arises a consistent theory of life which seems 
to give a whole plan of it, there will appear within a score or two 
of years a great Irrationalist to tell the world of strange seas and 
forests which are nowhere down on the map. The great movement 
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which rose to its height 
in the French Hevolution and the Positivist philosophy, was the 
last great Rationalistic synthesis. The inevitable Irrationalist who 

followed it was Thomas 
Carlyle. This is the 
first and most essential 
view of his position. 

In order to ex- 
plain the matter more 
clearly, it is necessary 
to recur to our image 
of the old gentleman 
whom no tailor could 
fit. Not only do the 

From a fJtoio hy G. G. Kapler, M.A. '' 

THE ROOM AT ARCH HOUSE IN WHICH CARLYLE WAS BORN tailorS tcud tO thiuk 




THOMAS CARLYLE 



r-"^ 





From a. photo hy G. G. Najiier, M.A. 

MAINHILL FARM 
The Home of Carlyle's Parents from 1815 to 1825 



that clothes can be 
made to fit the old 
gentleman, but they 
tend very often to think 
that the whole ques- 
tion is a question of 
clothes. Thus, for in- 
stance, the Popes and 
Bolingbrokes of the 
earlier eighteenth- 
century tried to make 
man a purer symbol 
of civilisation. They tried to pluck from him altogether his love of 
the savage and primeval, as they might have plucked off a shaggy wig 
from the old gentleman in order to put on a powdered one. A by- 
stander of the name of Byron, who was indeed none other than the 
inevitable Irrationalist, startled them by pointing out that the shaggy 
object was not a wig at all, but the poor old gentleman's own hair ; 
that, in other words, the love of the savage, the primeval, the lonely 
and unsociable, was a part of man, and it was their business to recog- 
nise it. Then arose 
the new fashion in cos- 
mic clothes, which did 
recognise this natural 
element. Rousseau 
and Shelley took the 
old gentleman in hand, 
and provided him 
with spring-like gar- 
ments, coloured like 

Frvm %. photo by J. Patrick, Edinbitrgh tllC clouds of mOminSf. 

HODDAM HILL . ' 

Where Carlyle lived in 1825 But OUC Of tllClr 




THOMAS CARLYLE 

Frojn a 

portrait hy 

Daniel Maclise, R.A. 

now in the 

Victoria 

and 
Albert 
Museum 

Riscligitz Collection 




THOINIAS CARLYLE 




A PORTRAIT OF CAR- 
LYLE ENGRAVED BY 
F. CROLL FROM A 
DAGUERREOTYPE BY 
BEARD 

Rischgitz Collection 



principles was the absolute principle of equality. Finding, therefore, 
that the old gentleman was wearing a curiously shaped hat, com- 
pounded of crown, coronet, and mitre, the great hat of Godhood, 
kinghood, and superiority, they proceeded, in order to make him 
more natural, to knock it off; and to them suddenly appeared the 
inevitable Irrationalist, a Scotch gentleman from Dumfriesshire, who, 
jiddressing them politely, said, " You believe that that regal object 
you are knocking off is his hat : believe me, gentlemen, it is his head. 
Such mistakes will occur after a hasty inspection, but that kingship is 
really a part of the old gentleman, and it is your business to recognise 



THOMAS CAULYLE 



THOMAS CARLYLE 

Frotn a sketch by Count 
D'Orsay (1839) 

Rischgitz Collection 




L_... 



it." As Byron had come, just as the classic edifice of pohte deism had 
been completed, to point out that the fact remained that he, Byron, did 
prefer walking by the seashore to taking tea in the garden, so Carlyle 
appeared, just as the austere temple of political equality was erected, 
to point out that the fact remained that he did think many people 
a great deal better than himself, and very many people a great deal 
worse. Thus, then, as the asserter of the natural character of king- 
ship against the natural character of equality, it is that Thomas Carlyle 
primarily stands twenty-one years after his death. 

Now I do not think, as I shall show later, that Carlyle ever really 



THOMAS CARI.YLE 




CARLYLE'S FIRST 

EDINBURGH 

LODGING IN SIMON 

SQUARE 

From a photograJ)h by 

Mr. Thomas Clark, 

Edinbzirg-h 



understood the true doctrine of equality ; but it is certainly at 
least equally true that the egalitarians and the ordinary opponents 
of Carlyle have never done the least justice to Carlyle's doctrine 
of hero-worship. The usual theory is that he believed in a race of 
arrogant strong men, brutally self-sufficient and brazenly indifferent 
to ethical limits, and that he wanted these men to frighten and 
dominate the populace as a keeper or a doctor frightens and dominates 
the lunatic in a cell. It is not too much to say that there is scarcely 
a trace in Carlyle's works of this barbarous and ridiculous idea. If 
there be a trace of it here and there, it is mere explosion of personal 
ill-temper, and has nothing whatever in common with Carlyle's 
deliberate theory of the hero. His theory of the hero was that he was 
a man whom men followed, not because they could not help fearing, 
but because they could not help loving him. His theory, right or 
wrong, was that when a man was your superior you were acting 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



I, MORAY STREET 

(NOW SPEY 

STREET), LEITH 

WALK, EDINBURGH 

From a pliotograjih hy 

Mr. Thomas Clark, 

Edinbur«;h 




naturally in looking up to him, and were therefore happy ; that you 
were acting unnaturally in equalising yourself with him, and were 
therefore unhappy. Most people, except those solemn persons who 
are called with some humour free-thinkers, would agree, for instance, 
that the worship of God was a human function, and therefore gave 
pleasure to the performer of it, like eating or taking exercise. Now 
Carlyle held, rightly or wrongly, that the worship of man, of the great 
man, was also a human function, and therefore gave pleasure to the 
performer of it. It all depends upon whether we do take an egalitarian 
or an aristocratic view of the spiritual world. If the spiritual world is 
based upon equality, then, no doubt, to keep a man in an inferior 
position must spiritually depress and degrade him ; but if beings in 
the spiritual world have higher and lower functions, it is obvious that 
it is equally depressing and degrading to a man to take him out of his 
position and make him either a citizen or an emperor. 



10 



THOMAS CARLYLE 




THOMAS CARLYLE 

From a photo by the 
London Sterecscopic Co. 



Moreover, the real practical truth that underlay Carlyle's gospel 
of the hero has in other ways been misunderstood. The general 
idea is that Carlyle thought that, if a man were only able, every- 
thing was to be excused to him. If Carlyle, even at any moment, 
thouo-ht this, it can only be said that for that moment Carlyle was 
a fool, as many able men may happen to be. But, as a matter of 
fact, what Carlyle meant was something much sounder. To say 
that any man may tyrannise so long as he is able, is as ridiculous 
as saying that any man may knock people down so long as he is 
six feet high. But in urging this very obvious fact the opponents of 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



11 




photo by G. G. Napier, M.A. 

MRS. CARLYLE'S BIRTHPLACE 
Dr. Welsh's House at Haddington. 



Carlyle too often forget 
a simpler truth a't the 
back of the Carlyle 
gospel. It is that, while 
in one sense the same 
moral test is to be ap- 
plied to all men, there 
does remain in ordinary 
charitable practice a 
very great difference 
between the people who 
consider it necessary to 
see some definite thing 
done before they die, 
and the people who cheerfully admit that two hundred years will 
scarcely bring what they require, and that meanwhile they desire to 
do nothing. A Tolstoian anarchist who thinks that men should be 
morally persuaded for the next two or three centuries to give up 
every kind of physical 
compulsion may, it is 
quite conceivable, be 
more riixht than the 
English Home Secre- 
tary who finds himself 
responsible for the sup- 
pression of a riot in 
Manchester ; but surely 
it is patently ridiculous 
to say that it is just as 
much to the anarchist's 
credit that he avoids p,.^„„ ^ y,,,,/,, ly k. mui 

1 4-- l\/r ^^'k^r<-l-^« THE HOUSE IN WHICH CARLYLE LIVED WHILST TEACHING 

shootmg Manchester ^" at kirkcaldy school 




12 



THOMAS CARLYLE 




From a pholo by G. G. Napier, JII.A. 

SCOTSBRIG 

A far.Ti in the neighbourhood of Ecclefechan to which the Carlyles removed 
from Mainhill in 1826 



workmen as it would 
be to the Home Secre- 
tary's credit if he 
avoided shooting them. 
It would be equally 
ridiculous to say that, 
if the Home Secretary 
conceived it necessary 
to shoot them, from a 
sense of responsibility, 
that his action, even if 
wrong, was really as 
wrong as the conduct of a Tolstoian who should shoot them without 
any reason at all. In this sense, therefore, there is really a different 
test, and a perfectly fair one, for men of action and for men of 
abstract theories and remote hopes. 

Now, it must definitely be set to the credit of men like Cromwell 
and Mirabeau, that they were undoubtedly opposed to and embar- 
rassed by men whose projects, even in their own eyes, were scarcely 

a part of practical 
politics. These men 
exist in every country 
and in every age. They 
are wilfully and etern- 
ally in opposition. 
They do not agree 
sufficiently with the 
active powers even to 
argue with them with 
any profit. Their ideal 
is so far away that 
they do not even desire 




From a photo by J. Patrick, Edinburgh 

TEMPLAND, NEAr'tHORNHILL, DUMFRIESSHIRii 

Thomas Carlyle married Jane BaiIHe Welsh on October 17th, 1826, at 
Templand, Mrs. Welsh's residence 




From the fainting; by J. McNeill Whistler 

THOMAS CARLYLE 

(Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. T. & R. Annan & Sons, by courtesy 
of the Glasgow Corporation) 



14 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



it with any immediate hunger. They count it a pleasant and natural 
thing to live and die in revolt. They are ready to be critics, they 
are ready to be martyrs, they are emphatically not ready to be 
rulers. In this way Cromwell, considering how he might make some 
English polity out of a chaos of English parties, had to argue for 
hours together Avith Fifth Monarchy men, to whom the vital question 
was whether the children of malignants should not be slain, and 
whether a man who was caught swearing should not be stoned to 
death. In this way Mirabeau, striving to keep the tradition of 
French civilisation intact amid a hundred essential reforms, found 
his way blocked by men who insisted on discussing whether in the 
ideal commonwealth men would believe in immortality, or go through 




From a photo, hy Mr. Thojnas Clark, Edijirin-i;li 

21, COMELY BANK, EDINBURGH 
Carlyle and his wife lived at Comely Bank for eighteen months after their marriage 



THOMAS CARLYLE 15 

a rite of marriage. Now, while fully granting that both types have an 
eternal value, it is certainly not just that precisely the same ethical 
test should be applied to Cromwell and the Fifth Monarchy men, 
to INIirabeau and the worshipper of pure reason. It is not just that we 




From a wood engraving by Pearson of Sir J. E. BoeJinis gold medallion 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
(Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Chapman and Hall) 

should judge in precisely the same way the pace of a butcher's cart 
which is obliged to get to Pimlico, and the pace of a butcher's 
cart which is designed at some time or other to reach the site of 
the Garden of Eden. It is not just that we should judge in the same 
way the man who is simply anxious to erect a parish pump, and 



16 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



the opponent of the pump, 
who looks forward to a 
day when there shall not 
only be no pump, but no 
parish. The man of action, 
then, really has in this 
sane and limited sense a 
claim to a peculiar kind 
of allowance, in that it is 
of vital necessity to him. 
that a certain limited 
grievance should be re- 
moved. It is easy enough 
to be the man who lives 
in a contented impotence ; 
the man who luxuriates in 
an endless and satisfied 
defeat. He does not desire 
to be effective ; he only 
desires to be right. He 
does not desire passionately 
that something should be 
done ; he only desires that 
it should be triumphantly proved to be necessary. 

This is the real contribution of Carlyle to the philosophy of the 
man of action. He revealed, entirely justly, and entirely to the 
profit of us all, the pathos of the practical man. He made us 
feel, what is profoundly true, that the tragedy of the death of Mary, 
Queen of Scots, is nothing to the tragedy of the death of Elizabeth ; 
that the tragedy of the death of Charles I. is nothing to the 
tragedy of the death of Cromwell. A man like Charles I. died 
triumphantly ; he did not indeed die as a martyr, but he died 




From a photo by iks, London Stereoscopic Co. 

THOMAS CARLYLE ABOUT i860 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



17 



as something which is much more awful and exceptional — a con- 
sistent man. I^e was worse than a tyrant, he was a logician. But 
a man like Cromwell is in a much harder case, for he does not 
wish to die and be a spectacle, but to live and be a force. He has 
to break altogether with the splendid logic of martyrdom. He 
has to eat his own words for breakfast, dinner, and supper. He has 
to outlive a hundred incarnations, and always reject the last ; his 
progress is like that unnerving initiation in the wild tale of Tom 
Moore's, in which the disciple had to climb up a stone stairway 
into the sky, every step of which fell away the moment his foot 
had left it. This is the only genuine truth that Carlyle brought 
from his study of strong men. If ever he said that we must 
blindly obey the strong 
man, he was merely 
angry and personal, 
and untrue to his 
essentially generous 
and humane spirit. 
When he said that we ^ 

must reverence the 
strongman he some- 
times expressed him- 
self with a certain 
heated confusion, and 
left it doubtful whether 
he meant that we 
should reverence the 
strong man as we re- 
spect Christ, or merely 
as we respect Sandow. 
But we should all .- ^ 

from a photo by Elliott &> Fry 

asfree with him in his thomas carlyle, isss 



y 




18 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



essential and eternal con- 
tribution — that we should 
pity the strong man more 
tlian an idiot or a cripple. 
It may be said that 
there is a certain incon- 
sistency between these 
two justifications of 
Carlyle's hero - worship : 
that we cannot at the 
same time respect a man 
because he is above us in 
a definite spiritual order, 
and because he is in what 
is popularly called a hole ; 
that we cannot at once 
reverence JNIirabeau be- 
cause he was strong and 
because he was weak. 
This kind of inconsistency 
does exist in Carlyle ; it 
is, I may say with all reverence and with all certainty, the eternal and 
inevitable inconsistency which characterises those who receive divine 
revelations. The larger world, which our systems attempt to explain 
and chiefly succeed ^ 




A PORTRAIT OF CARI.YLE TAKEN IN 1S79 
Rischgitz Collection 



in hiding, must, when 
it breaks through 
upon us, take forms 
which appear to be 
conflicting. The 
spiritual world is so 
rich that it is varied ; 






FACSIMILES OF 
CARLYLE'S SIGNATURE 

(Reproduced by kind 
permission of Messrs. 
Chapman & Hall 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



19 




From a photo by J. Patrick, Edinburgli 

CRAIGENPUrXOCK 
Carlyle's residence from 1828 to 1834 



SO varied that it is in- 
consistent. Thajt is 
why so many saints 
and great doctors of 
rehgion have pinned 
tlieir faith to paradoxes 
hke the " Credo Quia 
Impossibile," the great 
theological paradoxes 
which are so much 
more dazzling and 
daring than the para- 
doxes of the modern Jldneur. The supreme glory of Carlyle was 
that he heard the veritable voices of the Cosmos. He left it to 
others to attune them into an orchestra. Sometimes the truth he 
heard was this truth, that some men are to be commanded and 
some obeyed ; sometimes that deeper and more democratic truth 
that all men are abovfe all things- to be pitied. 

It will be found relevant to what I have to say hereafter to remark 
at this point that I do 
not myself accept 
Carlyle's conception of 
the spiritual world as 
exhaustive. I believe 
in the essence of the 
old doctrine of equality, 
because it appears to 
me to result from all 
conceptions of the 
divinity of man. Of 
course there are in- 
equalities, and obvious 




1)0111 a Jiioto oy J. Jr iiti luk, hambut^li 

PORTRAIT GROUP TAKEN AT KIRKCALDY 
Thomas Carlyle, his niece, his brother, and Provost Swan 



•20 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



ones, but though they are not insignificant positively, they are 
insignificant comparatively. If men are all really the images of God, 
to talk about their differences has its significance, but only about the 
same significance which may be found in talking about the respective 
heights of twenty men, all of whom have received the Victoria Cross, 
or the respective length of the moustaches of twenty men, all of whom 
have died to save their fellow-creatures. In comparison with the 
point in which they are equal, the point in which they are unequal 
is not merely decidedly, but almost infinitely, insignificant. But my 
reason for indicating my own opinion on the matter, at this point; 

is a definite one. Carlyle's 
view of equality does not 
happen to be mine ; but it hajy 
an absolute right to be stated 
justly, and to be stated from 
Carlyle's point of view\ It was^ 
not a brutal fear or a mean 
worship of force ; it was a 
serious belief that some found 
blessedness in commanding, 
and some in obeying. Now 
this kind of intellectual justice 
was the one great quality 
which was lacking in Carlyle 
himself. He would not consent 
to listen to Rousseau's gospel, 
as I have suggested that we 
should listen to Carlyle's gospel. 
He would not put Rousseau's 
gospel from Rousseau's point 
of view. And consequently to 
the end of his days he never 




I^roiiL a tO'i'a-cotta Intst in tlie A atioiial f'oftiaU OalleTy^ 
by Sir J. E. Boehm, R.A. 

THOMAS CARLYLE 

(Reproduced from " Past and Present," by kind permission 
of Messrs. J. M. Dent & Co.) 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



21 




understood any gospel exeept 
Carlyle's gospel. 

When a literary man is known 
to have been almost a monster of 
industry, when he has produced a 
colossal epic like " Frederick the 
Great " on the dullest of all earthly 
subjects — Germany in the eighteenth 
century — when he has piled up all 
the complicated material of the 
history of the French lle\'olution, 
lost it, and by a portent of heroism 
piled it all up again ; when he has 



Jrroin a photo by J, Patrick, ^tuuuuri^.t. 

CARLYLE'S HOUSE AT 5 {ncyiv 24), CHEYNE 
ROW, CHELSEA 

achieved such masterpieces of i 
research as the discovery of |* 
sense in Cromwell's speeches, 
and good qualities in Frederick 
of Prussia : when an author s 
has done all this, it may seem a fe 
singular comment upon him to % 
say that his main characteristic ' 
was a lack of patience. But 
this was in reality the chief 
weakness, in fact the only real 
w^eakness, of Carlyle as a moral- | 
ist. It is very much easier to 

have what may be called moral (Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. 




JANE WELSH CARLYLE 

Chapman and 



Hall) 



22 



THOMAS CARLYLE 




CORNER 
IN 
DRAWING- 
ROOM 

AT 5 

CHEYNr: 

ROW, 

with Carlyle's 
Reading Chair, 

given liim 
by John Forster 

Drawn hy R. 

Gi ay jniDi a 

pliotograpli I'y 

C. Baly (1881) 

(Reproduced 

from Reginald 

Blunt's "The 

Carlyles' Chelsea 

Home," by kind 

permission of 

the author) 



patience or mental patience than to have something which may best 
be described as spiritual patience, Carlyle was patient witli facts, dates,, 
documents, intolerably wearisome memoirs ; but he was not patient, 
with the soul of man. He was not patient with ideas, theories, 
tendencies, outside his own philosophy. He never understood, and 
therefore persistently undervalued, the real meaning of the idea of 
liberty, which is a faith in the growth and life of the human mind; 
vague indeed in its nature, but transcending in its magnitude even 
our faith in our own faiths. He was something of a Tory, something 
of a Sans-culotte, something of a Puritan, something of an Imperialist, 
something oi a Socialist ; but he was never, even for a single moment,. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



23 



a Liberal. He did not believe as the Liberal believes, first indeed 
in his own truth, which in his eyes is pure truth, but beyond that 
also in that mightier truth whicli is made up of a million lies. 
And this spiritual impatience of Carlyle has left its peculiar mark 





I'rom a drawing by E. J. Sullivan 

THOMAS CARLYLE 
(Reproduced from the illustrated "Sartor Resartus," by kind permission 
Messrs; George Belt' tSc 'Sons) 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



25 



in the only defect which can really 
be found in his historical works. 
Of the astonishing power and humour 
and poignancy of those historical 
works 1 think it scarcely necessary 
to speak. A man must have a very 
poor literary sense who can read one 
of Carlyle's slighter sketches, such as 
" The Diamond Necklace," and not 
feel that he has at the same time 
to deal with one of the greatest 
satirists, one of the greatest mystics, 
and incomparably one of the finest 
story-tellers in the world. No his- 
torian ever realised so strongly the 
recondite and ill-digested fact that 
history has consisted of human beings, 
each isolated, each vacillating, each 
living in an eternal present ; or, in 
other words, that history has not 
consisted of crowds, or kings, or Acts 
of Parliament, or systems of government, or articles of belief. And 
Carlyle has, moreover, introduced into the philosophy of history one 
element which had been absent from it since the writing of the Old 
Testament — the element of something which can only be called humour 
in the just government of the universe. "He that sitteth in the heavens 
shall laugh them to scorn, the Lord shall have them in derision," is a 
note that is struck again in Carlyle for the first time after two 
thousand years. It is the note of the sarcasm of Providence. Any 
one who will read those admirable chapters of Carlyle on Chartism 
will realise that, while all other humanitarians were insisting upon 
the cruelty or the inconsistency or the barbarism of neglecting the 

( 




Froiu a phoio in possession of 

VV. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D. 
MRS. CARLYLE ABOUT 1864 



26 



THOMAS CARLYLE 




rrom a pnoto Oy G. G. Napier M.A. 

CARLYLE'S GRAVE AT ECCLEFECHAN 

Thomas Carlyle died on February 5th, 18S1 



problem of labour, 
Carlyle is rather filled 
with a kind of almost 
celestial astonishment 
at the absurdity of 
neglecting it. 

But a definite 
defect there is, as I 
haAC suggested, in 
Carlyle, considered as 
an historian, and it 
flows directly from that 
real moral defect in his nature, an impatience with other men's ideas. 
In judging of men as men, he was not only quick and graphic and 
correct, but in the main essentially genial and magnanimous. Only a 
very superficial critic will think that Carlyle was misanthropic because 
he was surly. There is very much more real sympathy with human 
problems and temptations in a page of this shaggy old malcontent 
than in whole libraries of constitutional history by dapper and polite 
rationalists, who treat men as automata, and put their virtues and 

vices into separate 
pigeonholes. If I had 
made a mistake or 
committed a sin that 
l:ad any sort of human 
character about it, I 
would very much 
rather fall into the 
hands of Carlyle than 
into the hands of 

From a photo by J. F. Go7-don, Haddington IMr. HallaUl Or IVlr. 

MRS. CARLYLE'S GRAVE IN HADDINGTON CHURCH -,- 1\T"11 T> U'l 

Mrs. Carlyle died on April 21st, 1S66 J aiTlCS JMlU. liUt Whlle 





From the portrait painted by Sir J. E. iMiliais, F.R.A.,for Mr. J. A. Froude in 1S77 

THOIMAS CARLYLE 

III the National Portrait Gallery. Riscligitz Collection, 

27 



28 



THOMAS CAllLYLE 




THE GROUND-FLOOR ROOMS AT 5, CriEYNE ROW (iloc) 
(Reproduced from Reginald Blunt's " Historical Handbook to Chelsea," by kind permission of the author) 

Carlyle did realise the fact that every man carries about with him his 
own hfe and atmosphere, he did not reaUse that other truth, that every 
man carries about with him his own theory of the world. Each one 
of us is living in a separate Cosmos. The theory of life held by 
one man never corresponds exactly to that held by another. The 
whole of a man's opinions, morals, tastes, manners, hobbies, work 
back eventually to some picture of existence itself which, whether it 
be a paradise or a battle-tield, or a school or a chaos, is not precisely 
the same picture of existence which lies at the back of any other brain. 
Carlyle had not fully realised that it was a case of one man, one 
Cosmos. Consequently, he devoted himself to asking what place any 
man, say Robespierre or Shelley, occupied in Carlyle's Cosmos. It 
never occurred to him sufficiently clearly to ask what place Shelley 




Photo by Frederick Hollyer 

THOMAS CARLYLE, at. 73 

From the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., now in the National Portrait Gallery 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



31 




THE SOUND-PROOF STUDY AT CHEYNE ROW IN 1900, SHOWING THE DOUBLE WALLS 

(■Reproduced from Reginald Blunt's "Historical Handbook to Chelsea," by kind permission 

of the author) 

occupied in Shelley's Cosmos, or Robespierre in Robespierre's Cosmos. 
Not feeling the need of this, he never studied, he never really listened 
to, Shelley's philosophy or Robespierre's philosophy. Here, after a 
somewhat long circuit, we have arrived at the one serious deficiency 
in Carlyle's histories, a neglect to realise the importance of theory 
and of alternative theories in human affairs. 

The standing example of this is the " History of the French Revo- 
lution." Carlyle's conception of the French Revolution is simply and 
absolutely that of an elemental outbreak, an explosion of nature in 
history, an earthquake in the moral world. Human nature, Carlyle 
seems to tell us, had been stifled more and more in the wrappings 
of artificiality, until, when its condition had just passed the tolerable. 



32 



THOMAS CARLYLE 




THE KITCHEN AT No. $, CHEYNE ROW (1900) 
(Reproduced from Reginald Blunt's " Historical Handbook to Chelsea," by kind permission of the author) 

gagged, blinded, deaf, and ignorant of what it really wanted, by a 
gigantic muscular effort it burst its bonds. 

So far as it goes, that is perfectly true of the French Revolu- 
tion ; but only so far as it goes. The French Revolution was 
a sudden starting from slumber of that terrible spirit of man 
w^hich sleeps through the greater number of the centuries ; and 
Carlyle appreciates this, and describes it more powerfully and 
fearfully than any human historian, because this idea of the spirit 
of man breaking througli formulic and building again on funda- 
mentals was a part of his own philosophical theory, and therefore 
he understood it. But he never, as I have said, took any real 
trouble to understand other people's philosophical theories. And 
he did not reahse the other fact about the French Revolution — 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



33 




CARLYLE'S WRITING-DESK AND CHAIR 
(Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Reg'nald Blunt) 



the fact that it was not merely an elementary outbreak, but was 
also a great doetrinal movement. It is an astonishing thing that 
Carlyle's " French Revolution " contrives to be as admirable and as 
accurate a history as it is, while from one end to the other there is 
hardly a suggestion that he comprehended the moral and political 
theories which were the guiding stars of the French Revolutionists. 
It was not necessary that he should agree with them, but it was 
necessary that he should be interested in them ; nay, in order that 
he should write a perfect history of their developments, it was neces- 
sary that he should admire them. The truly impartial historian is 
not he who is enthusiastic for neither side in a historic struggle : 
that method was adopted by the rationalistic historians of the 
Hallam type, and resulted in the dullest and thinnest and most 



34 THOMAS CAllLYLE 

essentially false chronicles that were ever compiled about mankind. 
The truly impartial historian is he who is enthusiastic for both sides. 
He holds in his heart a hundred fanaticisms. The truly philosophical 
historian does not patronise Cromwell and pat the King on the head, 
as Hallam does ; the true philosophical historian could ride after 
Cromwell like an Ironside and adore the King like a Cavalier. 

The only history that is worth knowing, or worth striving to 
know, is the history of the human head and the human heart, and 
of what great loves it has been enamoured : truth in the sense of 
the absolute justice is a thing for which fools look in history and 
wise men in the Day of Judgment. It is the glory of Carlyle 
that he did realise that the intellectual impartiality of the rationalist 
historian was merely emotional ignorance. It was his only defect 
that he extended his sympathy, in cases like that of the French 
Revolution, only to headlong men and impetuous actions, and 
not to great schools of revolutionary doctrine and faith. He made 
somewhat the same mistake with regard to the Middle Ages, 
touching which his contributions are unequalled in picturesqueness 
and potency. He conceived the mediaeval period in Europe as a 
barbaric verity, "a rude, stalwart age"; he did not realise what is 
more and more unfolding itself to all serious historians, that the 
mediseval period in Europe was a civilisation based upon a certain 
scheme of moral science of almost unexampled multiplicity and 
stringency, a scheme in which the colours of a lacquey's coat could 
be traced back to a system of astronomy, and the smallest bye-law 
for a village green had some relation to great ecclesiastical and 
moral mysteries. It is remarkable that we always call a rival civili- 
sation savage : the Chinese call us barbarians, and we call them 
barbarians. The Middle Ages were a rival civilisation, based upon 
moral science, to ours based upon physical science. Most modern 
historians have abused this great civilisation for being barbarous : 
Carlyle liad made one great stride beyond them in so far that he 



THOMAS CAllLYLE 



35 



admired it for being barbarous. But his fatal strain of intel- 
lectual impatience prevented him from getting on to the right 
side of Catholic dogmas, just as it prevented him from getting on 
to the right side of Jacobin dogmas. He never really discovered 
what other people meant by ApostoHc Succession, or Liberty, or 
Equality, or Fraternity. __ 

Probably his few mis- ■-" ,^-5^^ 

takes arose from his un- 
fortunate tendency to find 
" shams." Some have sup- 
posed this to be the essence 
and value of his message ; it 
was in truth its worst pitfall 
and disaster. A man is 
almost always wrong when 
he sets about to prove the 
unreality and uselcssncss of 
anything : he is almost in- 
variably right when he sets 
about to prove the reality 
and value of anything. 1 
have a quite different and 
much more genuine right to 
say that bull's-eyes are nice 
than I have to say liquorice 
is nasty : I have found out 
the meaning of the first 
and not of the second. 
And if a man goes on a 
tearing hunt after shams, as 
Carlyle did, it is probable biAxuE ok carlvle 

^ .. By Sir J. E. Boehm, R.A. In the Gardens on the Chelsea Embankment 

that he will find little Rischgitz collection. 




36 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 



or nothing real. He is tearing off the branches to find the 

tree. 

I have said all that is to be said against Carlyle's work almost 
designedly : for he is one of those who are so great that we rather 
need to blame them for the sake of our own independence than 
praise them for the sake of their fame. He came and spoke a word, 
and the chatter of rationalism stopped, and the sums would no 
longer work out and be ended. He was a breath of Nature turning 
in her sleep under the load of civihsation, a stir in the very stillness 
of God to tell us He was still there. 



Arc'n House, 
Ecclefeclian 

see pai{e 2 
Carlyle's mother 

see page i 

Ecclef3Chan, 
Duiniriesshire 

see page 3 



The room in 
■whicli Carlyle 
was born 

see page 2 



Carlyle's first 
EdinlDurgh 
lodging in Simon 
Square 

see page 8 



1, Moray Street 
(now Spey Street), 
Leith Walk, 
Edintourgh 

see page 9 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 

In a house which his father, a mason, had built with his own hands, 
Thomas Carlyle was born on December 4th, 1795. His mother, Margaret 
Aitken, "a woman of the fairest descent, that of the pious, the just and 
wise," was the second wife of James Carlyle, and Thomas was the eldest of 
their nine children. 

In the Entepfuhl of Sartor B.emrttts Carlyle has pictured his native 
village. It consisted of a single street, down the side of which ran an open 
brook. "With amazement," he writes, " I began to discover that Entepfuhl 
stood in the middle of a country, of a world. ... It was then that, 
independently of Scliiller's Wilhelm Tell, I made this iu)t quite insignificant 
reflection (so true also in spiritual things): ""Any road, this simple 
Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the world ! ' " The room 
at Arch House in which he was born now contains some interesting 
mementoes. On the mantelpiece are two turned wooden candlesticks, a 
gift of John Sterling, sent from Rome ; the table provides a resting-place 
for his study-lamp and his tea-caddy. Most of the furniture came from 
Cheyne Row. 

Carlyle came up from Ecclcfechan to attend Edinburgh University when 
he was scarcely fourteen years of age, and with a companion, Tom Smail, 
journeyed the entire distance on foot. They secured a clean-looking and 
cheap lodging in Simon Square, a poor neighbourhood on the south side of 
Edinburgh, off Nicholson Street. After residing in various parts of the old 
town, Carlyle removed in 1821 to better quarters, and the most interesting of 
his various abodes in Edinburgh was at 1, Moray Street (now Spey Street), 
Leith Walk. Here he commenced his literary work in earnest, and began 
to regard life from a brighter standpoint. Leith Walk is described in Sartor 
Resurtus as the Bue Saint-Thomas de I'Evfer. " All at once," he writes, " there 
rose a thought in me, and I asked myself, ^ What art thou afraid of .'' . . • ' 
It is from this hour that I incline to date my spiritual new birth or baphometic 
fire-baptism ; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a man." 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 



37 



Tlie house in 
wMch Carlyle 
lived wliilst 
teacMng at 
Kirkcaldy school 
see page ii 



Mainhill Farm 

see pcge 4 



Hoddam Hill 

see page 4 



Scotsbrig 

see page 12 



Jane Welsh 
Carlyle 

see page 21 



Mrs. Carlyle's 
Birthplace, 
Haddington 
see page 11 



Templand, near 

Thornhill, 

Dumfriesshire 

see page 12 



2'.. rnmelv Bank 
Edinburgh 

seej>age 14 



Craigenputtock 

see page 19 



It was at Kirkcaldy that Carlyle first met Edward Irving-, the master of a 
rival school in the town. They became intimate friends. "But for Irving," 
he s^ys, "I had never known what the communion of man with man means." 
It was here, too, that he made the acquaintance of Miss Margaret Gordon, 
the " Blumine " of Sartor Remrtus. Carlyle describes the town in the 
lleininiscences : "Kirkcaldy itself . . . was a solidly diligent, yet by no means 
a panting, puflBng, or in any way gambling ^Lang Toun.' I, in particular, 
always rather liked the people — though from the distance, chiefly ; chagrined 
and discouraged by the sad trade one had ! " 

In 1815 the Carlyles moved to Mainhill Farm, and here he "first learned 
Gei'man, studied Faust in a dry ditch, and completed his translation of 
Wilhdm Mehier ! " Ten years later Carlyle took possession of Hoddam 
Hill Farm, his mother going with him as housekeeper, and his brother Alick 
as practical farmer. Here they remained until 1826. " With all its manifold 
petty troubles," says Carlyle, in the Remhuscences, " this year at Hoddam 
Hill has a rustic beauty and dignity to me ; and lies now like a not ignoble 
russet-coated idyll in my memory." 

The abrupt termination of Carlyle's tenancy of Hoddam Hill occurred 
simultaneously with the expiration of his father's lease of Mainhill, and in 
1826 the family removed to Scotsbrig, that excellent " ' shell of a house ' for 
farming purposes," where Carlyle's parents spent the remainder of their lives. 
In this unpretentious home Carlyle passed many restful holidays among his 
own people. 

" In the ancient county-town of Haddington," he writes, " on July 14th, 
1801, there was born to a lately wedded pair a little daughter, whom they 
named Jane Baillie Welsh, and whose subsequent and final name (her own 
common signature for many years) was Jane Welsh Carlyle. . . . Oh, she 
was noble, very noble, in that early as in all other periods, and made the 
ugliest and dullest into something beautiful ! I look back on it as if through 
rainbows — the bit of sunshine hers, the tears my own." 

Mrs. Carlyle, in her Earhj Letters, mentions her father's home at Haddington 
where she was born. " It is my native place still ! and after all, there is much 
in it that I love. I love the bleaching green, where I used to caper, and roll, 
and tumble, and make gowan necklaces and chains of dandelion stalks, in the 
days of my ' wee existence.' " 

Carlyle's marriage with Jane Baillie Welsh took place on October I7th, 
1826, at Templand, where Mrs. Welsh then resided. The ceremony was of 
the quietest description, his brother John Carlyle being the only person present 
besides Miss Welsh's family. 

For eighteen months after their mari-iage the Carlyles lived at 21, Comely 
Bank, the "trim little cottage, far from all the uproar and putrescence 
(material and spiritual) of the reeky town, the sound of which we hear not, 
and only see over the knowe the reflection of its gaslights against the dusky 
sky." It was during this time that Carlyle contributed essays to the Edinburgh 
and Foreign Quarterly Reviews. In 1828 a removal was made to Mr. AV^elsh's 
manor at Craigenputtock, where in the solitude "almost druidical" Sartor 
Re.wrtus was written. " Poor Puttock ! " he exclaims in one of his letters, 
" Castle of many chagrins ; peatbog castle, where the devil never slumbers noj 



38 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 



Carlyle's house 
£ t 5 (now 24), 
Cneyne Row, 
Chelsea 

see page 2i 



Comer in 
Drawing-room at 
5, Cheyne Row 
see page 22 



The Garden at 
5, Cheyne Row 

see page 23 



The Sound-proof 
study at Cheyne 
Row 

see page 31 



The garret study 
in 1857 

see page 29 



sleeps ! very touching art thou to me when I look on thy image Jiere." In this 
lonely spot, cut off from all social intercourse, the Carlyles remained until 
1884, when, after " six years' imprisonment on the Dumfriesshire moor," they 
moved to Chelsea and took up their residence at No. 5, Cheyne Row, in the 
house which was to be their home until death. 

After a week's wearisome house-hunting in London under the guidance of 
Leigh Hunt, Carlyle sent a long description of the proposed new residence to 
his wife, of which the following is an extract : — " We are called ' Cheyne Row ' 
proper (pronounced Chainie Row) and are a '^ genteel neighbourhood,' two old 
ladies on the one side, unknown character on the other, but with '■ pianos ' as 
Hunt said. The street is flag-patlied, sunk-storied, iron-railed, all old- 
fashioned and tightly done up. . . . The house itself is eminent, antique, 

wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been all new painted and repaired 

On the whole a most massive, roomy, sufficient old house, with places, fo^ 
example, to hang, say, three dozen hats or cloaks on, and as many crevices 
and queer old presses and shelved closets as would gratify the most covetous 
Goody — rent £35 ! 1 confess I am strongly tempted." 

The brightest and happiest part of Carlyle's day was the early evening. 
" Home between five and six, with mud mackintoshes off, and the nightmares 
locked up for a while, I tried for an hour's sleep before my (solitary, dietetic, 
altogether simple) bit of dinner ; but lirst always came up for half an hour to 
the drawing-room and her ; where a bright, kindly fire was sure to be burning 
(candles hardly lit, all in trustful chiaroscuro). . . . This was the one bright 
portion of my black day. Oh, those evening half-hours, how beautiful and 
blessed they were ! " 

The garden at Cheyne Row was much appreciated by the Carlyles, who 
turned to the best advantage this " poor sooty patch." Mrs. Carlyle writes : 
" Behind we have a garden (so called in the language of flattery) in the worst 
of order, but boasting of two vines which produced two bunches of grapes in 
the season, which ' might be eaten,' and a walnut tree, from which I gathered 
almost sixpence-worth of walnuts." Here stood the quaint china barrels she 
often referred to as " noblemen's seats," but Carlyle generally used one of the 
kitchen chairs by preference. He found the garden " of admirable comfort 
in the smoking way," and sometimes in summer would have his writing-table 
placed under an awning stretched for that purpose, and with a tray full of books 
at his side would work there when the heat drove him from his garret study. 

The construction of this sound-proof study was proposed as far back as 
1843, but not until ten years later was the enterprise put into practical execu- 
tion. On August 11th, 1853, Carlyle wrote to his sister: "At length, after 
deep deliberation, I have fairly decided to have a top story put upon the house, 
one big apartment, twenty feet square, with thin double walls, light from the 
top, etc., and artfully ventilated, into which no sound can come ; and all the 
cocks in nature may crow round it without my hearing a whisper of them ! " 

The scheme looked promising on paper, but the result was " irremediably 
somewhat of a failure." Although the noises in the immediate neighbour- 
hood were excluded, sounds in the distance, "evils that he knew not of" in 
the lower rooms, became painfully audible; nevertheless he occupied the 
room as his study until 1865, and here, "whirled aloft by angry elements," 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. 



39 



Carlyle's writing- 
table aud cliair 

see page 33 



The ground floor 
rooms at 5, 
Cheyne Row 

see page 28 



The kitchen at 
5, Cheyne Kow 

see page 32 



Mrs. Carlyle's 
grave 

see page 26 



Carlyle's grave 

see page 26 



he completed what Dr. Garnett named well "His Thirteen Years' War 
with Frederick." His wriiin^-table and arm-chair stood near the centre, and 
within easy reach was tlie little mahogany table for the books he happened 
to be using — or such of them as M^ere not on the floor. 

Carlyle bequeathed his writing-table to Sir James Stephen. " I know," 
he wrote in his will, " he will accept it as a distinguished mark of my esteem 
He knows that it belonged to my father-in-law and his daughter, and that 1 
have written all my books upon it, except only Schiller, and that for fifty 
years and upwards that are now passed I have considered it among the most 
precious of my possessions." 

It was into the ground-floor room — at that time spoken of as the 
"parlour" — that Edward Irving was ushered when he paid his one visit 
to Cheyne Row, in autumn 1834. " I recollect," writes Carlyle in the 
Reminiscences, " how he complimented her (as well he might) on the pretty 
little room she had made for her husband and self ; and, running liis eye over 
her dainty bits of arrangement, ornamentations (all so frugal, simple, full 
of grace, propriety, and ingenuity as they ever were), said, smiling : ' You 
are like an Eve, and make a little Paradise wherever you are.' " 

No description of Carlyle's Chelsea home would be complete without 
mention of the kitchen where Mrs. Carlyle made marmalade " pure as liquid 
amber, in taste and look almost poetically delicate " ; and where, too, she 
stirred Leigh Hunt's endlessly admirable morsel of Scotch porridge." 
Readers of the Letters and Memorials will obtain many glimpses of this 
apartment and its occupants. The fittings were very old-fashioned, espe- 
cially the open kitchen-range with its " kettle-crane " and " movable 
niggards." The dresser which stood there in 1834 remains against the 
south wall ; the table still stands in the centre, and there is a sink in 
the corner beside the disconnected pump. 

When Carlyle was resting at Dumfries, after the exhaustion of his 
triumphant Inaugural Address upon his installation as Lord Rector of 
Edinburgh University, he received the announcement of his wife's sudden 
death whilst driving in her carriage in Hyde Park on April 21st, 18G6. 
The effect of the calamity upon him was terrible. " There is no spirit 
in me to write," he said, "though I try it sometimes." 

Mrs. Carlyle was buried in Haddington Church. " I laid her in the grave 
of her father," writes Carlyle in l\\e Reminiscences, "according to covenant 
of forty years back, and all was ended. In the nave of old Abbey Kirk, 
long a ruin, now being saved from further decay, with the skies looking 
down on her, there sleeps my little Jeannie, and the light of her face will 
never shine on me more." 

The inscription on Carlyle's tombstone is very simple : the family crest 
(two wyverns), the family motto (Humilitate), and then these few words : — 
"Here rests Thomas Carlyle, who was born at Ecclefechan, 
4th December, 1795, and died at 24, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
London, on Saturday, 5th February, 1881. 

'^No monument," writes Froude, "is needed for one who has made an 
eternal memorial for himself in the hearts of all to whom truth is the 
dearest of possessions," 



THOMAS 

CARLYLE 



NOTE ON SOME 
PORTRAITS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 



From a portrait 
by Daniel 
Macllse, R.A. 

see page 5 

From a skstoh by 
Count D'Orsay 
(1839) 

see page 7 

From Sir J. E. 
Boehm's gold 
medallion 

see page 15 

From a drawing 
by E. J. SuUivau 

see page 24 



From the 
painting by 
J. McNeUl 
WMstler 

see page 13 



From the 
painting by 
G. F. Watts, R.A., 
act. 73 

see page 30 



From the 
portrait painted 
by Sir J. E. 
Millais, P. R.A. 

see page 27 



From a statue by 
Sir J. E. Boehm, 
R.A. 

see page 35 



This portrait is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. " Carlyle/' 
writes David Hannay in the Magazine of Art, "already the author of 
Sartor Resartus, stands leaning against the traditional pillar with the con- 
ventional air of colourless good breeding. There is neither line in his 
face nor light in his eye " 

" He (D'Orsay) has contrived^" says the same writer, " to make Carlyle 
look like the hero of a lady's novel — an excellent young man with a curl 
in his upper lip and a well-combed head of hair." 

The medallion has been reproduced from a wood engraving by Pearson. 
It was presented to Carlyle in 1875, on his eightieth birthday, by friends and 
admirers in Edinburgh. 

" Professor Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, of Weissnichtwo, is nothing if he 
is not Carlyle in disguise, the projection of the Scotchman's individuality 
upon a half-humorous, half-philosophical German background." — Ernest 
Rhys : Introductory Note to Sartor Resartus. 

" Mr. Whistler, in the Glasgow Corporation Art Galleries, has dlsthictly 
succeeded in making the face of Carlyle interesting. He has avoided any- 
thing like exaggeration. He has not tried to make capital out of the rugged 
mass of the hair, or to give a wild-man-of-the-woods look to the face by laying 
stress on its deep lines and stern contours. The head is noble, quiet, and 
sad. The artist has tried to paint a serious portrait rather than to give a 
'view,' and he has succeeded." — David Hannay in the Magazine of Art. 

This portrait, executed for John Forstej*, who was very pleased with it, 
is now in the National Portrait Gallery. Carlyle himself describes it as 
" a delirious-looking mountebank, full of violence, awkwardness, atrocity, 
and stupidity, without recognisable likeness to anything I have ever known 
in any feature of me. Fuit in fatis. What care I, after all } Forster is 
much content." 

The picture by Millais, also in the National Portrait Gallery, was painted 
in 1877 for Mr. J. A. Froude. His opinion of it was as follows : — " And yet 
under Millais's hands the old Carlyle stood again upon the canvas as I had 
not seen him for thirty years. The inner secret of the features had been 
evidently caught. There was a likeness which no sculptor, no photographerj 
had yet equalled or approached. Afterwards, I knew not how, it seemed to 
fade away. Millais grew dissatisfied with his work, and, I believe, never 
completed it." 

In the gardens on the Chelsea Embankment stands a statue of Thomas 
Carlyle in bronze by the late Sir Edgar Boehm, which was placed there by 
subscription in 1882. Mr. Froude considered it " as satisfactory a likeness 
in face and figure as could be rendered in sculpture ; and the warm regard 
which had grown up between the artist and Carlyle had enabled Boehm to 
catch with more than common success the shifting changes of his expression. " 
40 



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